At the Salon des Indépendants in 1888 Seurat demonstrated the versatility of his technique by exhibiting Circus Sideshow, a nighttime outdoor scene in artificial light, and Models, an indoor, daylight scene (Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia). This is Seurat’s first nocturnal painting and the first to depict popular entertainment. It represents the parade, or sideshow, of the Circus Corvi at the annual Gingerbread Fair, held in eastern Paris around the place de la Nation, in spring 1887. Sideshows were staged outside the circus tent, for free, to entice passersby to purchase tickets. The onlookers at the far right are queued on stairs leading to the box office.

Circus Sideshow and Seurat’s Career:Circus Sideshow is one of only six major figure paintings Seurat created during his short but influential career. Born and raised in Paris as the son of a customs official, he pursued classical art training, including at least three years at the École des Beaux-Arts, and spent a year (1879–80) in military service in Brest before establishing himself as a professional artist in France’s capital city. He first exhibited at the 1883 Salon, showing the conté crayon drawing of his friend Aman-Jean (later bequeathed to The Met by Stephen C. Clark, the same benefactor who donated Circus Sideshow). Seurat’s first large-scale painting, Bathers at Asnières (National Gallery, London), was rejected by the official Salon but debuted at the inaugural exhibition of the jury-free Salon des Indépendants in 1884. His next milestone, another daytime scene of outdoor leisure, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte––1884 (Art Institute of Chicago; final study in The Met’s collection) premiered at the eighth and final Impressionist exhibition in 1886 as a great succès de scandale, harkening a new direction for the painting of modern life with Seurat’s dotted touch, pixellated rendering of light, and stiff placement of figures in the landscape. The critic Félix Fénéon labeled the new technique Neo-Impressionism. It has also been called Pointillism (emphasizing the dotted brushwork) and Divisionism (accentuating the divided color tones); however, Seurat preferred the term Chromo-luminarism to highlight the effect of luminosity that was the objective of his approach. He amassed a following of like-minded artists eager to apply scientific and aesthetic principles to their pictures more rigorously and began displaying his work more widely, including at the Les XX exhibitions in Brussels. Following La Grande Jatte, Seurat turned his attention to an indoor daylight scene, Models (Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia), to tackle the challenge of the classical nude. While that painting was underway, he began Circus Sideshow, his initial attempt to apply his method to a scene of nighttime outdoor entertainment. These two works were exhibited together with drawings at the 1888 Salon des Indépendants, where the larger Models attracted greater attention from critics. Nevertheless, Seurat continued to be fascinated with popular performance: his fifth major work, Chahut, of 1889–90 (Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo), and last, Circus (Musée d’Orsay, Paris), painted the year of his death at age thirty-one, brought spectators inside the lively main events. Circus Sideshow stands apart––both in Seurat’s oeuvre and from works by other artists on the subject––for its solemn, mysterious aura, which has perplexed viewers and invited myriad interpretations since it was first seen in 1888.

The Sideshow Subject:Circus Sideshow (Parade de cirque) represents an ensemble of circus players lined up on a narrow stage outside a tent performing sample entertainment to entice customers to their show. The French term parade describes this type of teaser or come-on act, which is loosely translated to "sideshow" in English. Although Seurat suppressed identifying details in favor of a stylized approach, his contemporaries, notably the critic Gustave Kahn (1888), recognized the cast of characters as the Corvi traveling circus troupe (see Additional Images, fig. 1) when the painting debuted at the Salon des Indépendants. In the spring of 1887, Seurat sketched the Corvi sideshow staged at the Gingerbread Fair (Foire au pain d’épice), an annual festival held after Easter in a working class quarter of eastern Paris around the place de la Nation. These fairs were a popular source of amusement in France for centuries and drew a wide range of visitors to experience their sundry attractions. Fairs and sideshows also provoked the interest of artists, especially during the nineteenth century when Daumier and caricaturists exploited their potential for political commentary; Naturalists seized upon their convergence of classes in animated scenes; poster-makers capitalized on their power of persuasion; and avant-garde artists from the Neo-Impressionists to Pablo Picasso and Georges Rouault embraced the familiar imagery of low-brow entertainment to test the boundaries of high art (Thomson 2017).

The Painting and Its Reception: At the center of Circus Sideshow, a trombonist wearing a conical hat stands on a dais with his lips pursed around the mouthpiece of his instrument. To the left, he is accompanied by four other musicians, whose instruments may be identified as, from the far side, an ophicleide or saxhorn, a clarinet, a cornet, and a second clarinet (per Bradley Strauchen-Scherer, Associate Curator, Musical Instruments). These four figures are set back in space from the trombonist’s dais on the main platform in front of the tent. Two horizontal railings cut through their bodies at the waist and knees, below which vertical balusters stand in for their legs. A diagonal banister behind the dais indicates the location of steps from ground level to the stage. To the right of the trombonist, a buffoon with a peaked hairstyle and ruffled collar turns to face off with a towering mustached man in profile sporting a formal tailcoat with a baton tucked under his arm. This character has often been referred to as Monsieur Loyal, the French moniker for a ringmaster; most recently, Richard Thomson (2017) postulated, on the basis of contemporary illustrations and photographs, that this is a portrait of Ferdinand Corvi, proprietor and ringmaster of the circus Seurat studied. Along the bottom of the picture, thirteen heads cast in shadow represent the mixed crowd witnessing this spectacle––male and female, young and old. On the left side, bowler hats suggest working class types, while the top hats and elaborate lady’s hats on the right indicate bourgeois patrons. Some watch the performance as others interact with their neighbors. At the right edge, the figures ascend the steps, from shadow into the light, to purchase tickets from the seller visible in the open box office window.

Through the long rectangular windowpanes, five globe lights glow from under the circus tent. Across the top, nine starbursts represent the shimmering exterior lights emitted from the gas-jetted pipe, connected by a slanting rod to the tent structure. Just below the rod and to the left of the green door leading to the main stage, a white sign indicating ticket prices is partially eclipsed by the form of the trombonist. Over his other shoulder, colorful ovals, which the critic Kahn (1888) identified as posters of the Corvi Circus, decorate the canvas backdrop of the tent. The branches of a spindly tree disrupt the geometric regularity of the composition with its rhythmic pattern of forms––the sequence of spiked lights; the round bowler hats, ovals, and zeroes; the green and purple rectangles; and the triangles created by the trombonist’s conical hat, cocked leg, and diagonal banister.

Seurat meticulously plotted the painting along a tripartite scheme, as reflected in the three extant preparatory drawings: The Tree (private collection; see Additional Images, fig. 2), The Trombonist (Philadelphia Museum of Art; fig. 3), and Ferdinand Corvi and Pony (private collection; fig. 4). A small dotted drawing in ink (Menard Art Museum, Aichi, Japan; fig. 5) and an oil study on panel (Foundation E. G. Bührle Collection, Zürich; fig. 6) reveal the artist’s plans for the overall composition and its range of tonal values and colors. Both of these include grid notations, which were discovered by Met conservator Charlotte Hale (2017) under the surface of the painting through macro-X-ray-fluorescence imaging and served to aid in both the transfer and final structuring of the picture. Seurat modified the composition by adding the tree, the figures climbing the stairs, and, at a later stage, the blue border, which effaced his signature in the lower right corner.

Seurat’s sense of compositional harmony derives in part from his close study of theoretical tracts, most notably Charles Blanc’s Grammaire des arts du dessin (1867). He also read the writings of such contemporary scientists as Michel Eugène Chevreul and Ogden Rood, mathematician Charles Henry, and artist Eugène Delacroix as he developed his aesthetic. He took a particular interest in color theory, and in Circus Sideshow exploited a palette of dominant violets and greens, with warmer tones for illuminated areas, to render penumbral light.

At the Salon des Indépendants in 1888, critics primarily commented on the novelty of the nighttime effect in their spare remarks on the picture. Félix Fénéon and Jules Christophe simply observed that Seurat had applied his method to a nocturnal scene. Paul Adam and Gustave Kahn noted the effects of gas lighting, although Kahn and particularly Gustave Geffroy found Seurat’s attempt to fall short. The work was next exhibited at the Les XX exhibition of 1892, after Seurat’s death, with similar reception. It remained in his family until 1900 and in relative obscurity into the first decades of the new century.

The reputation of Circus Sideshow began to rise in the 1920s alongside burgeoning interest in Cubism and classicism. In 1920 André Salmon, the French critic and defender of the Cubists, cited the painting as one of Seurat’s "vast synthetic compositions" that was misunderstood in its time but revealed "profound intention." At the end of the decade, Alfred H. Barr Jr., the influential founding director of the Museum of Modern Art, featured Circus Sideshow along the central axis of the museum’s opening exhibition and hailed it as the "most geometric in design as well as the most mysterious in sentiment" of Seurat’s major pictures (Barr 1929, MoMA catalogue). The same year, Roger Fry praised "the completeness with which the most literal facts of everyday life have been transmuted into the purest, most abstract of spiritual values." Three years later, Stephen C. Clark, trustee of MoMA and The Met, acquired the painting and regularly lent it to exhibitions, ensuring its familiarity to the American public (Stein 2017). He bequeathed Circus Sideshow to The Met upon his death in 1960, and it has left New York on only one occasion since––for the Paris venue of the 1991 Seurat retrospective.

Art historians have continued to grapple with deciphering Seurat’s intentions in the painting, especially in light of contemporary theories. Various scholars, including John Rewald (1956), Michael Zimmermann (1991), Robert Herbert (1958, 1980), Gary Tinterow (1991), and Thomson (2017) have debated the extent to which Seurat sought to apply Charles Henry’s ideas of the emotive potential of line and color in his composition dominated by strong horizontals (associated with calmness) and cool colors (associated with melancholy). Henri Dorra and John Rewald first proposed in 1959 that Seurat used the Golden Section to determine his geometric structure, an idea extended by Rubin in 1970, Herbert in 1980, and Zimmermann in 1991, but debunked by Herz-Fischler in 1983 and retracted by Herbert in 1991. Paul Smith (1991) introduced a possible connection to Wagnerian theory in the theatricality of the picture, taken up by Herbert (1991), Jonathan Crary (1999/2009), Richard Hobbs (2009), and Michelle Foa (2015). Writers have also considered literary sources for the painting, such as the poems suggested in Russell 1965 and Herbert 1980, and artistic sources, like Egyptian art (Barr 1929, Herbert 1962, 1980), Poussin (Fry 1929), Piero della Francesca (Boime 1965), Daumier (Herbert 1980, Thomson 2017), Rembrandt (Thomson 1985, 2017), Japanese prints (Dorra 1989, Thomson 2017), and Watteau (Tinterow 1991). In 1980, Herbert was the first to fully explicate the composition and its connections to contemporary illustrations of the Corvi Circus. Albert Boime (2008) interpreted the painting through the lens of contemporary politics, reading the painting as a statement on disillusionment over the populist General Boulanger, who sought in vain to restore one-man rule to France. Richard Thomson (1985, 2017) has elaborated on the social context of the picture, concluding that the painting is inherently paradoxical.

the artist, Paris (until d. 1891); his mother, Mme Ernestine Seurat, Paris (1891–at least 1892, and presumably until her death in 1898); the artist's brother and brother-in-law, Émile Seurat and Léon Appert, Paris (until 1900; sold with another work for Fr 1,000 through Félix Fénéon to Bernheim-Jeune); Josse and Gaston Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (1900–1929; sold on January 1, 1929 for £16,097 to Reid & Lefevre and Knoedler); [Reid & Lefevre, Glasgow and London, and Knoedler, New York, jointly owned in half-shares, 1929–32; sold by Knoedler, stock no. A610, in November 1932 for $47,000 to Clark]; Stephen C. Clark, New York (1932–d. 1960)

New York. Museum of Modern Art. "Exhibition of Modern European Art," October 4–25, 1933, unnumbered cat. (lent from a private collection).

San Francisco. California Palace of the Legion of Honor. "French Painting from the Fifteenth Century to the Present Day," June 8–July 8, 1934, no. 148 (lent by Mr. Stephen C. Clark, New York; dates it 1889).

New York. Museum of Modern Art. "Modern Works of Art," November 20, 1934–January 20, 1935, no. 29 (lent from a private collection).

André Salmon. "Georges Seurat." Burlington Magazine 37 (September 1920), p. 121, includes it among a list of Seurat's works that were misunderstood by his contemporaries and which showed "profound intention".

Charles Angrand. Letter to Gustave Coquiot. August 16, 1923 [published in "Charles Angrand: Correspondances, 1883–1926," 1988, p. 313], remarks that Seurat pointed out to him the complementary "haloes" around the gaslamps of Paris, an effect which he put to use in the painting.

Gustave Coquiot. Seurat. Paris, 1924, pp. 43, 134, 151, 186, 226–28, ill. opp. p. 80, reprints comments by Charles Angrand (1923); believes that it was executed in Seurat's studio in the "passage de l'Elysée des Beaux-Arts" [but see Fénéon 1924]; mentions the ten works that Seurat showed at the 1888 Indépendants exhibition, calling them all canvases [but see Fénéon 1924]; likens the trombone player to a figure by Velázquez; remarks on the equilibrium of the painting.

[Félix Fénéon]. "Précisions concernant Seurat." Bulletin de la vie artistique 5 (August 15, 1924), pp. 354–60, ill. (detail), disagrees with Coquiot (1924) that it was painted in the artist's studio by the Elysée-des-Beaux-Arts, and instead believes it was executed on boulevard de Clichy; notes that it was among ten paintings sold at the 1900 Revue Blanche exhibition, mistakenly stating that the exhibition took place in January, rather than March to April, 1900.

"Cologne has Exhibition of Art in Rhineland." New York Times (August 16, 1925), p. X6, notes that "in intensity of conception [it] dominates" the 1925 exhibition at Bernheim-Jeune.

A[lfred]. H. B[arr]. Jr. First Loan Exhibition: Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat, van Gogh. Exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art. New York, 1929, pp. 25–26, 43, no. 55, ill. (overall and detail), dates it 1889; calls it one of the most important paintings in the exhibition and remarks that "in its formality and symmetry the composition is quite without parallel in its day"; notes that the geometric perspective, similar to the "Grand Jatte," is here divided into three planes—the foreground of heads, the middle ground with the trombone player, and the backdrop with the other musicians—and believes Seurat was influenced in this respect, and in the frontality and rigidity of the figures, by Egyptian reliefs; calls it "the most geometric in design as well as the most mysterious in sentiment" of his major canvases.

Roger Fry. "Seurat's 'La Parade'." Burlington Magazine 55 (December 1929), pp. 290–91, 293, ill. (color), as in the collection of Messrs. Alex. Reid and Lefèvre Ltd.; remarks that "even among Seurat's works this picture seems . . . to be unique in the completeness with which the most literal facts of everyday life have been transmuted into the purest, most abstract of spiritual values"; discusses the simplification of forms and their relation to one another, comparing these qualities to Poussin.

International Studio 94 (December 1929), ill. p. 64, as courtesy of M. Knoedler and Co., calls it one of the seven great Seurat subjects.

"Un Musée d'art moderne à New-York." Beaux-Arts (October 15, 1929), p. 6, states that the picture is in the collection of "Knoedler et Cie" and that it will be in the Museum of Modern Art's first loan exhibition.

Alfred H. Barr Jr. "Modern Museum." Charm (November 1929), pp. 17, 84, discusses the high price it might bring if put up for sale and cites it as an example of great art formed as the result of "the most exquisite calculation".

Lillian Semons. "The Museum of Modern Art, Its Advent and Its First Show." Brooklyn New York Times (November 10, 1929), p. ?, notes that the picture holds the place of honor in the exhibition.

Henry McBride. "New Museum of Modern Art, Now Open." New York Sun (November 9, 1929), p. 3, notes that the picture was lent by "the Knoedler's".

"Shows Modern Art Here Tomorrow." New York Times (November 7, 1929), p. 26.

Dorothy Grafly. "'Ancestor' Show Assembles Art of 'Modern' Pioneers." Philadelphia Public Ledger (November 10, 1929), p. 65?, ill., states that the picture "drew fire from artists and critics of the old school".

Robert Rey. La peinture française à la fin du XIXe siècle: la Renaissance du sentiment classique. Paris, 1931, pp. 123–24, 131, 144, reprints the May 3, 1891, inventory of Seurat's studio, which notes the presence of the canvas as well as four studies for it and three "croquetons"; remarks that the inventory was executed by Félix Fénéon, Maximilien Luce, and Paul Signac; states that the picture is in America and was formerly in the Bernheim Jeune collection.

Claude Roger-Marx. Seurat. Paris, 1931, p. 14, fig. 16, dates it 1890 but notes that it was in the 1888 exhibition of the Indépendants.

"Three Paintings from America to be Included in the Exhibition of French Art Opening in January at Burlington House, London." Parnassus 3 (December 1931), ill. p. 21, as in the collection of Knoedler's.

P. G. Konody and Xenia de Tunzelmen. An Introduction to French Painting. London, 1932, p. 223, ill. opp. p. 222, as "La Parade" and "The Parade" and mistakenly stated to be in the collection of S. Courtauld, Esq. by courtesy of Knoedler and Co., New York.

Elisabeth Luther Cary. "Seurat to Surrealisme." New York Times (July 16, 1933), p. X5, ill., remarks that it, and "La Grande Jatte," are "informed by something of the inflexibility of youth".

William M. Milliken. "Superb Art Display Marks Cleveland Museum's 20th Anniversary." Art Digest 10 (July 1, 1936), p. 14, states that it must be ranked as one of the masterpieces of the century.

James Laver with notes on artists and pictures by Michael Sevier inFrench Painting and the Nineteenth Century. New York, 1937, p. 96, no. 136, ill., dates it 1887–88 and incorrectly locates it in the collection of Roland F. Knoedler, Esq., New York.

Edward Alden Jewell. "Gallery to Open in Capital Today." New York Times (November 14, 1937), p. 51.

Art in our Time. Exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art. New York, 1939, unpaginated, no. 76, ill., dates it 1889; compares it to a Byzantine mosaic or Egyptian wall painting in its verticality; notes that "Seurat's laboriously scientific technique dissolves the natural forms into a kind of molecular dance and achieves at the same time an unearthly radiation of light".

"One of the Greatest Exhibitions of Modern Art Ever Assembled." The Standard (August 19, 1939), p. ?, notes that it bubbles with "pin-point carbonation".

R. H. Wilenski. Modern French Painters. New York, [1940], pp. 94, 108, 257, 309, 348, dates it 1887–88; mentions the posthumous inventory of Seurat's studio, noting its presence and that of five drawings and three "croquetons" for it [but see Rey 1931 and Dorra and Rewald 1959, who reprint the inventory, cataloguing four drawings and three croquetons]; comments on the similarity in subject to Cocteau's 1917 ballet "Parade," with costumes and drop-scene by Picasso.

D[orothy]. C. M[iller]. Modern Masters from European and American Collections. Exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art. New York, 1940, pp. 8, 23, no. 13, ill.

Gaston Bernheim de Villers. Petites histoires sur de grands artistes. Paris, 1940, p. 117, states that he bought this picture and "Port de Granville" from Félix Fénéon for one thousand francs and calls them among the most important paintings by Seurat; notes that he first met Fénéon at the Revue Blanche.

Alfred M. Frankfurter. ". . . And the Modern Masters." Art News 38 (January 27, 1940), p. 30, ill., notes that it was created in the tradition of Masaccio and Piero della Francesca.

Germain Seligman. The Drawings of Georges Seurat. New York, 1947, pp. 11–12, 17, 19–21, 23–25, 28, 38, 59, under nos. 21–23, p. 60, under no. 24, dates it 1888; dates the earliest drawings relating to it from 1881–82, noting that Seurat worked on the theme for about six years before completing the final painting; catalogues and discusses six drawings which he relates to this painting.

John Rewald. Seurat (1859–1891). [1st ed.]. Paris, [1949?], unpaginated, fig. 39, states that Seurat began work on the painting in the fall of 1887, and dates it 1887–88 in the caption.

John Rewald. "Seurat: The Meaning of the Dots." Art News 48 (April 1949), pp. 26, 62–63, ill. (color), states that gaslit scenes like this one and "Le Chahut" (Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo) show much stronger colorations than Seurat's land- and seascapes, and that these two works also reveal more clearly his theories on relating lines and curves.

Dora Panofsky. "Gilles or Pierrot? Iconographic Notes on Watteau." Gazette des beaux-arts, 6th ser., 39 (May–June 1952), p. 325 n. 19, cites an eighteenth-century definition of the French word "parades," and lists this picture as a later representation of the same idea.

A Collector's Taste: Selections from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Stephen C. Clark. Exh. cat., M. Knoedler & Co. New York, 1954, unpaginated, no. 20, ill., dates it 1889 but places it in the Salon des Indépendants of 1888.

John Rewald. Post-Impressionism: From Van Gogh to Gauguin. 1st ed. New York, 1956, pp. 141–42, 420, 427, 516, 543, states that Seurat began work on this picture in the fall of 1887 and that his attempts to apply Charles Henry's theories were strongest in works produced over that winter.

Robert L. Herbert. "Seurat in Chicago and New York." Burlington Magazine 100 (May 1958), p. 152, comments on its close ties to the theories of Charles Henry and notes the existence of a document in the Signac Archives that includes a preliminary study for the architectural background of the painting, together with notations from Henry's "Une Esthétique Scientifique" (Paris, 1885).

Alfred Frankfurter. "Midas on Parnassus." Art News Annual 28 (1959), p. 39, ill., dates it 1889; states incorrectly that it sold for about $85,000 in 1932.

Henri Dorra and John Rewald. Seurat: L'œuvre peint, biographie et catalogue critique. Paris, 1959, pp. XXII, XXIV, LXII–LXIV, LXVII, LXXV–LXXVI, LXXVIII, XCII–XCIV, C, CIV n. 46, pp. CIX–CX, 224–227, no. 181, ill., note that, while the painted border was added by Seurat, the original painted frame has disappeared; state that it was begun in the winter of 1887, completed by the beginning of 1888, and exhibited in March 1888, remarking that he completed the work much more quickly than his other large paintings; note that they have found only four drawings and one croqueton of the four drawings and three croquetons for the painting listed in the inventory (DR 180 a-c, 180, 181a); analyze the composition, including Seurat's use of the Golden Section ratio, reproducing an image of it with compositional axes applied to it; state that it was sold by the Seurat family to Bernheim-Jeune shortly after 1900.

William I. Homer. "Henri Dorra and John Rewald, Seurat; l'œuvre peint; biographie et catalogue critique." Art Bulletin 42 (September 1960), pp. 229, 231, believes that a drawing traditionally thought to be a study for "Les Poseuses" is actually a conté crayon drawing for the woman third from the left in the row of spectators; notes that the finished painting does not show this figure's torso but that the profile of the head and neck are visible.

C. M. de Hauke. Seurat et son œuvre. Paris, 1961, vol. 1, pp. IX, XXVI, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX, 150–53, 197, 211, 222, 228–29, 231, 239, 246, 250, no. 187, ill., dates it 1888; publishes a list written by Madeleine Knobloch to M. Luce after the death of Seurat indicating which paintings were to stay in her possession and which were to stay in the Seurat family, the latter group including this work; publishes early exhibition catalogues that included it; lists fifteen studies for it, including one panel and fourteen drawings.

Stuart Preston. "Metropolitan Museum Displays Paintings and Drawings Received in 1960." New York Times (October 17, 1961), p. 47, states that it casts the scene into "an almost Egyptian mold of impersonal grandeur".

Robert L. Herbert. Seurat's Drawings. New York, 1962, pp. 127–28, 131, 174, 181, colorpl. VIII, as "The Parade (Sidewalk Fair)"; believes it was begun in 1886, on the basis of the date of an unpublished study in a private collection in Paris, and first completed in 1888; finds that the palette exactly matches his 1890 works, which together with an examination of the surface brushwork leads him to postulate that the canvas was reworked in 1890; disagrees with de Hauke [see Ref. 1961], who calls "Acrobat by the Ticket Booth" (H671) a study for it, stating that the date of the drawing is "well before 1887" and that its subject never entered into any phase of the creation of the painting; comments on the influence of Egyptian art.

John Russell. Seurat. New York, 1965, pp. 11, 76, 78, 197, 212, 214–16, 218–19, 222, 226, colorpl. 194, dates it between the fall of 1887 and the beginning of 1888; discusses five drawings (H381, 382, 384, 385, and 386) that "look forward" to it and "Le Cirque"; states that "no amount of geometry can hide the fact that this picture offers a criticism of society" and calls Rimbaud's poem "Parade," which appeared on May 13, 1886, in "La Vogue," one of the origins of the painting; believes both artist and poet saw the circus as "a mirror to the condition of mankind in the new-made industrial cities of the late nineteenth century".

Albert Boime. "Seurat and Piero della Francesca." Art Bulletin 47 (June 1965), p. 267, fig. 6, compares it, in its "strong axiality and the severe architectural framework," to Piero della Francesca's "Discovery and Proof of the Cross" (San Francesco, Arezzo), which Seurat could have known through reproductions in the photograph collection of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts or through a copy hanging in the chapel of the Ecole; calls Piero influential in Seurat's early development.

Charles Sterling and Margaretta M. Salinger. French Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 3, XIX–XX Centuries. New York, 1967, pp. 193, 197–200, ill., mention a similarly patterned background and a row of silhouetted heads in an illustration by Gavarni in "Le Diable à Paris," 1846, which they say Seurat could have known; believe the painted border to be by the artist.

Theodore Reff. "Picasso's Three Musicians: Maskers, Artists & Friends." Art in America 68 (December 1980), p. 138, fig. 19 (color), compares it with Picasso's "Three Musicians" and suggests that Picasso could have seen it when it was exhibited in June 1917 or January 1920.

Robert L. Herbert. "'Parade de cirque' de Seurat et l'esthétique de Charles Henry." Revue de l'art 50 (1980), pp. 9–23, fig. 1 (color) and ill. on cover (color detail), remarks that after its exhibition at the Salon des Indépendants of 1888, it became one of Seurat's least admired works, defended mainly by Félix Fénéon; reproduces photographs and illlustrations of the Cirque Corvi; notes that an illustration by Heidbrink of the fair confirms the purpose of the metal bar running across the top of the composition as a support for the gas lamps; connects a sheet of notes and sketches by Seurat with his use of the Golden Section ratio and Charles Henry's and Humbert de Superville's ideas about expression in art; discusses the possible influence on Seurat of Egyptian art, popular imagery, and Daumier's circus scenes; relates the picture's mood to the French tradition of the sad clown, and interprets the picture as a comment on the vanity of all human pursuit of pleasure.

Robert Rosenblum. "Fernand Pelez, or The Other Side of the Post-Impressionist Coin." Art, The Ape of Nature: Studies in Honor of H. W. Janson. Ed. Moshe Barasch and Lucy Freeman Sandler. New York, 1981, pp. 711–12, fig. 4, compares this picture to Pelez's "Grimaces et misère" (Musée du Petit Palais, Paris), exhibited at the Salon of 1888, but believes that the similarities between the two paintings are "clearly not a question of influence but rather of common sources in life, academic training, and popular imagery".

Roger Herz-Fischler. "An Examination of Claims Concerning Seurat and 'The Golden Number'." Gazette des beaux-arts, 6th ser., 101 (March 1983), pp. 109–12 n. 12, refutes claims that Seurat consciously used the Golden Number in this and other works and theorizes instead that he used "a system of proportion [involving] simple ratios" that happen to approximate the Golden Section.

Charles S. Moffett. Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1985, pp. 11, 226–27, 255, ill. (color), notes that it was generally called "féerique" (enchanted) by Seurat's contemporaries.

Richard Thomson. Seurat. Oxford, 1985, pp. 133, 141, 147–48, 152–56, 166, 168, 176, 185, 197, 205, 209, 212, 214, 220–23, 231 n. 80, colorpl. 154, discusses the picture's composition, subject, and reception; states that it seems to have been executed "quite hastily, both as an antidote to Seurat's frustration with the lagging 'Les Poseuses' (1886–88, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia), and as an experiment with unapplied aesthetic theories" and notes its new shared compositional concerns with the Philadelphia picture; discusses the division of the audience along class lines, with workers at the left and bourgeois visitors on the right; relates it to earlier popular prints of and writings on the same subject and to a drypoint by Rembrandt, "Christ Presented to the People" (1655, e.g. The Met, 41.1.36).

Jean-Claude Lebensztejn. Chahut. Paris, 1989, pp. 14, 17, 25–26, 31–32, 67–70, 83, 91, 116, 119, 124, 137, 138 n., pp. 143, 149, ill., identifies the instruments played by the musicians in the picture; discusses the class divisions in the picture in terms of the practicalities of the ticket prices; mistakenly states that Clark bought it from Knoedler in 1933.

Henri Dorra. "Japanese Sources for Two Paintings by Seurat." Gazette des beaux-arts, 6th ser., 114 (September 1989), pp. 95–97, 99, fig. 1, states that the spectators in the foreground were derived from Kobayashi Kiyochika's design for the colored woodblock "Fireworks at Shinobazu Pond" and that Seurat was possibly also influenced by this woodblock to represent the circus at night.

Kenneth E. Silver. Esprit de Corps: The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World War, 1914–1925. Princeton, 1989, pp. 341–42, discusses it as a source for Fernand Léger's new sense of architectonic classicism in his "Le Grand Déjeuner" (1921, Museum of Modern Art, New York).

Michael F. Zimmermann. Seurat and the Art Theory of His Time. Antwerp, 1991, pp. 44, 216, 262, 268, 289, 296, 306, 317, 320, 324–25, 335, 337, 345–50, 354–56, 362, 364–66, 372, 374, 377–79, 388, 418, 440, 442, 446, 448, 270 nn. 81, 126, ill. p. 322 (color detail), fig. 495 (color), dates it 1888; remarks that the painting depicts a full brass band, including a trombone and a double-bass, to underline the melancholy atmosphere; notes that the use of the golden section governs its geometric structure; calls it a hieratic style that stylizes everyday life into a ritual; mentions the yellowish-violet nocturnal light, Seurat's adoption of the basic pessimism of Symbolism, and his use of "Egyptian" techniques of geometric arrangement; identifies certain contemporary figures; states that "the human urge to the sensational is here immortalized as a ceremonial"; discusses studies for it as well as popular prints and photographs of the Cirque Corvi; compares it to the contemporary vogue for Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy; discusses its negative reception from the critics; relates the bare tree and the figure at right, facing right, to the tree and the fishermen in "Le Pont de Courbevoie, hiver" (Courtauld Institute Galleries, London).

Seurat: Correspondances, témoignages, notes inédites, critiques. Ed. Hélène Seyrès. Paris, 1991, pp. 86, 166–67, 202, 288–89, 322, reprints several references that mention this work, as well as an inventory of Seurat's studio at his death, listing this work and several drawings and sketches for it.

Françoise Cachin inGeorges Seurat, 1859–1891. Exh. cat., Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris. New York, 1991, pp. 275, 278, 423 [French ed., "Seurat," Paris, 1991, pp. 14, 313, 317], compares the frieze of heads at the bottom of the painting to the carefully positioned objects in the foreground of "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884" (1884/86, Art Institute of Chicago); finds similarities in the compositional structure of "Poseuses" (Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia) and The Met's picture; states that Seurat used a "Poseuses" model for several spectators in the painting; erroneously states that it was for sale at Bernheim-Jeune only from 1908 to 1928.

Gary Tinterow inGeorges Seurat, 1859–1891. Exh. cat., Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris. New York, 1991, pp. 303–16, no. 200, ill. (color, overall and details) [French ed., "Seurat," Paris, 1991, pp. 337, 344, 347–56, 358–60, 389, no. 198, ill. (color, overall and details)], discusses at length the nighttime setting and artificial lighting; notes that although Kahn (1928) suggested that Whistler’s “ten o’clock lecture” may have inspired the picture, Mallarme’s translation was not published until after the painting’s completion; discusses Seurat’s technique and the changes between the preparatory drawings and the final painting, suggesting that the border may have been a late addition; discusses the various influences on the painting; states that the clown was modeled on Watteau’s “Gilles” (now known as “Pierrot,” 1719, Musée du Louvre, Paris).

Deborah Menaker Rothschild. Picasso's "Parade" from Street to Stage: Ballet by Jean Cocteau, Score by Erik Satie, Choreography by Léonide Massine. Exh. cat., The Drawing Center, New York. London, 1991, p. 204, fig. 184, states that several of Picasso's sketches for the décor of Jean Cocteau's "Parade" (Musée Picasso, Paris) indicate that he entertained fretting the top of the proscenium with gas lamps in an allusion to The Met's picture; discusses Picasso's and Seurat's similar attitudes with regard to ennobling Parisian lower middle-classes.

Floyd Ratliff. Paul Signac and Color in Neo-Impressionism. New York, 1992, p. 186, notes the similarity between the stippled pen and ink drawing for this painting and the one done the same year by Signac for his painting "Le Petit Déjeuner," suggesting that the two artists were in very close communication at that time.

Marcus Verhagen. Re-figurations of Carnival; the Comic Performer in Fin-de-siècle Parisian Art. PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley. Ann Arbor, 1994, pp. 291–93, 301, 304–16, 318, 321, 328–29, 334, fig. VI:3, discusses the picture in the context of the history of sideshows and the Cirque Corvi specifically; reviews interpretations of the painting and concludes that it is a muted defense of popular culture; notes the differences between the scene as Seurat depicts it and as it appears in contemporary postcards; states that it presents the travelling circus as "the purveyor of a disciplined, non-hierarchical form of distraction . . . conforming to broadly the same principles as the artist's painterly style".

David Sweetman. Paul Gauguin: A Complete Life. London, 1995, p. 130, identifies the figure of the trombonist as Seurat himself.

Kirk Varnedoe. Studies in Modern Art. The Museum of Modern Art at Mid-Century: Continuity and Change. Ed. John Elderfield. Vol. 5, The Evolving Torpedo: Changing Ideas of the Collection of Painting and Sculpture of The Museum of Modern Art. New York, 1995, pp. 15, 28, 63 n. 5, p. 72 n. 118, ill.

Jonathan Crary. Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture. Cambridge, Mass., 1999, pp. 5–7, 149–57, 160–61, 163–64, 175–78, 181, 187–214, 217–18, 220, 223–25, 227–29, 236, 238–41, 243–44, 246, 255–58, 269, 273, 278, 280, 366, ill. (overall and details), discusses the picture at length, especially the central figure of the trombone player; links it to various scientific and sociological theories and also to Richard Wagner’s theatrical spectacles; discusses its mimicry of theatrical spaces as well as its antiscenographic character, comparing it to Leonardo’s “Last Supper”; notes the transactional dimension of the work and its emphasis on value (particularly with regard to the ticket seller’s window and the sign for the cost of admission); relates it to the earlier drawing “A Shop and Two Figures” (ca. 1882; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York).

Howard G. Lay inMontmartre and the Making of Mass Culture. Ed. Gabriel P. Weisberg. New Brunswick, N.J., 2001, p. 175, mentions the painting as one of Seurat's last three large-format pictures in which he engaged the visual culture of the street by examining "promotional representations of modern life rather than modern life itself".

Daniel Wildenstein, Sylvie Crussard, and Martine Heudron. Gauguin, A Savage in the Making: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings (1873–1888). Milan, 2002, vol. 2, p. 609, state that it was completed in January 1888.

Jennifer Forrest. "Cocteau 'au cirque': The Poetics of 'Parade' and 'Le Numéro Barbette'." Studies in 20th Century Literature 27 (January 1, 2003), pp. 15–18, discusses its influence on Cubist painters, calling it an important precursor to Picasso's work on Jean Cocteau's ballet "Parade".

Richard Thomson in Jodi Hauptman. Georges Seurat: The Drawings. Exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art. New York, 2007, pp. 173, 175, fig. 2 (color), discusses the pivotal role of the preparatory drawings to the genesis of The Met's painting.

Eric Alliez with the collaboration of Jean-Clet Martin. L'Œil-cerveau: nouvelles histoires de la peinture moderne. Paris, 2007, pp. 257, 261, 263–64 n. 2, pp. 282–85, 288–89 [English ed., "The Brain-Eye: New Histories of Modern Painting," London, 2016, pp. 206, 209, 221–26, 242 nn. 121, 127, p. 243, 244 n. 137, pp. 248–49 nn. 191, 192, 194, 196–200], suggests that it is among the most paradigmatic of his paintings with regard to the "photo-graphic" quality of the drawing technique, with a flat, gray, spectral effect where luminosity had been the goal; compares the central trombone player to a hangman, the musicians to prisoners in the dock, and the sad tone of the event to a public execution; states that it deconstructs the Wagnerian "scenic dispositif" and inverts high and low art.

Albert Boime. Revelation of Modernism: Responses to Cultural Crises in Fin-de-Siècle Painting. Columbia, Mo., 2008, pp. 53–57, 59–62, 69, 79, 81–82 n. 58, pp. 83–84, 90–93, 100–101,colorpl. 3, notes that the picture has proved recalcitrant to interpretation; situates its pessimistic mood in the context of political disillusionment, particularly among Seurat's circle, in the wake of General Georges Boulanger's fall after the political "sideshow" of 1887–88; notes its contradictory, almost funereal, rendering of a moment of merriment; notes that the presence of overcoats indicate that Seurat depicts a fall or winter scene; states that it may mark the painter's shift from democratic politics to radical reformist movements; sees the sad representation of the performers as relating to the consequences for them, specifically, after Boulanger's fall; states Seurat's clown stands in for Boulanger; discusses Boulanger-related caricatures and popular songs to bolster his argument.

Georges Roque inSeurat Re-viewed. Ed. Paul Smith. University Park, Pa., 2009, p. 49, states that it aimed at giving the impression of artificial light at the expense of local colors and that this treatment related to Seurat's emphasis on light as of greater importance than color.

John House inSeurat Re-viewed. Ed. Paul Smith. University Park, Pa., 2009, pp. 106–7, 112 n. 37, discusses the picture in relation to Seurat's theories laid out in his 1890 letter to Beaubourg and notes that the painting includes elements of both "calmness" and "gaiety," in Seurat's own terminology, but that the overall mood is more somber than calm and in line with traditional "parade" imagery.

Joan U. Halperin inSeurat Re-viewed. Ed. Paul Smith. University Park, Pa., 2009, pp. 115, 128–30, 138, 144 n. 66, notes a particular melancholy in the picture beyond its muted colors and that Seurat's musicians are less "abject" than those in either Jules Laforgue's prose or Fernand Pelez's painting of the same subject; states Seurat's painting expresses a quiet serenity that is undermined by the series of lamps, ambiguous forms, and the trombonist; calls attention to the repetition of bowler-hatted men in positions of both entertainer and entertainee as reflections of one another; states its ironic theme is "false fun".

Richard Hobbs inSeurat Re-viewed. Ed. Paul Smith. University Park, Pa., 2009, pp. 230, 234–36, 238, states the picture could be called "hyperbolic in the Mallarmean sense" and that the Wagnerist framework in which Smith 1997 places the work can be seen as Mallarmean; discusses the specific elements of the picture that relate to Stéphane Mallarmé's Symbolist ideas.

Claire Maingon inA City for Impressionism: Monet, Pissarro, and Gauguin in Rouen. Ed. Laurent Salomé. Exh. cat., Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen. Paris, 2010, pp. 171–73, ill. (color), calls it "Circus Sideshow" and "Parade"; notes that Angrand posed for one of the figures in this painting.

Nancy Ireson. "The Pointillist and the Past: three English Views of Seurat." Burlington Magazine 152 (December 2010), p. 802.

Kerstin Thomas. Welt und Stimmung bei Puvis de Chavannes, Seurat und Gauguin. Berlin, 2010, pp. 128–29, 131, 136–40, 146–47, 149, 225 n. 414, p. 227 n. 472, ill. on cover (color detail), colorpl. X, discusses the painting's means of achieving a melancholy mood through color, a shallow depth of field, and a frieze-like arrangement of figures; states that the melancholy mood of the painting contrasts with the cheerfulness of the circus itself and that the mood is closely allied to the emotional subject of the abusive practices of child labor in the circus world, explored also in Fernand Pelez's painting and Jules Laforgue's poem "Soir de Carnaval" (the latter discussed in Herbert 1980); discusses Seurat's purposeful choice to depict such sites to evoke certain memories and feelings in his viewers, whether regarding leisure or boredom, sadness, or the cheerfulness of the event itself; notes the specificity of depicting the Corvi circus is part of the painter's means of affecting the viewer's perceptual process.

Juliet Bellow. Modernism on Stage: The Ballets Russes and the Parisian Avant-Garde. Farnham, England, 2013, pp. 114–16, 126 nn. 119, 120, discusses Picasso's appropriation of the motif of the spectators in The Met's picture in an ironic take on Seurat's pointillist style for the set of the ballet "Parade" (1917).

Charlotte Hale and Silvia A. Centeno inSeurat's Circus Sideshow. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2017, pp. 112–16, 125–28, figs. 115 (color, with gridded diagram), 116 (MA-XRF, color detail), 117 (color detail and MA-XRF, color detail), discuss the results of a technical examination of the painting; confirm the presence of a grid in the underdrawing as well as a large signature remaining at the bottom right from an earlier state of the painting (both visible with macro-X-ray fluorescence imaging).

In their catalogue raisonné, Dorra and Rewald (1959) list five studies associated with this painting: conté crayon drawings for the tree (DR180a), the trombone player (DR180b), and the clown and ringmaster (DR180c), an oil sketch of the overall composition (DR180), and an ink drawing of the overall composition (DR181a; but see Thomson 1985, who does not believe this drawing is by Seurat). De Hauke (1961) includes these same five studies (H667, 680, 669, 186, 681, respectively), as well as ten other drawings less closely related to the final picture.

This painting was listed in an inventory of Seurat's studio of May 3, 1891, shortly after his death (see Seyrès 1991), along with four drawings and three sketches or "croquetons" for it.

The painting is known to represent the spectacle used to advertise the Cirque Corvi, a miniature animal circus, which was set up in 1887 at the Foire aux pains d'épice in the Place de la Nation in Paris.